Ranged DPS role is about to be excluded from all content

[Kitfox]

I really hope we get some information in the next live letter on the 15th because the last mention of ranged balance was from late Stormblood when SE finally buffed MCH and said that we should be ready for nerfs in Shadowbringers again. But it seems like they forgot in their haste to remove Disembowel and Refresh that they can't use the same balancing anymore. There's no utility that would guarantee our spot and no Disembowel synergy to save us. While they probably have their hands full with the NIN and SMN mess, ranged classes really deserve a band-aid potency patch like NIN and SAM.

At least a confirmation that they're aware of the imbalances would be nice. It's awful to be in the dark and not know if the feedback is reaching the devs.

[Aiscence]

We already lived that for the whole 4.x expansion Lynn, sadly, to the point where in 4.4 we were less useful than a sam in a pure meta comp, and even after the buffs in 4.5, I dont feel like we were needing that much nerf.

I really hope to see some infos on that ...

[Lastelli]

I really hope we get some information in the next live letter on the 15th because the last mention of ranged balance was from late Stormblood when SE finally buffed MCH and said that we should be ready for nerfs in Shadowbringers again. But it seems like they forgot in their haste to remove Disembowel and Refresh that they can't use the same balancing anymore. There's no utility that would guarantee our spot and no Disembowel synergy to save us. While they probably have their hands full with the NIN and SMN mess, ranged classes really deserve a band-aid potency patch like NIN and SAM.

At least a confirmation that they're aware of the imbalances would be nice. It's awful to be in the dark and not know if the feedback is reaching the devs.

Well, do you remember when Yoshida said that they couldn't gli piercing res down to ranged dps because then they'd be "too op"? It all makes sense now...they probably never meant for ranged dps to be as strong as melee dps like they were in previous expansions.

[CKNovel]

Ranged DPS is so ridiculous right now, especially DNC.
Having multiple ranged makes that you are heavily punished if you make a mistake while it's supposed to be a "comfort" job, it actually puts more stress on the whole team.

The most hilarious case would be that we get no balance on ranged and a Ultimate with a tight DPS check.
If the DPS check is too tight, you might end up locking out SMN and RDM just to fit the DPS Pantheon.
Maybe even ranged just because a really average BLM will do the same job and I'm pretty sure Addle will work perfectly if not better than Tactician/Samba.
If the DPS check isn't tight enough, the MNK/DRG/BLM compositions will stomp the Ultimate.

They've been using the same balancing from Stormblood but without the same tools to support it. With the MNK, DRG and BLM overtuned we are paying for these mistakes, digging the gap by a 2k DPS difference.

[Kitfox]

Well, do you remember when Yoshida said that they couldn't gli piercing res down to ranged dps because then they'd be "too op"? It all makes sense now...they probably never meant for ranged dps to be as strong as melee dps like they were in previous expansions.

In Stormblood context, giving ranged their own piercing would've been too powerful. That's because we had Refresh which was pretty much mandatory to have for any harder content and already guaranteed our party slot. We no longer have that utility so we need to have more dps in its place to justify our existance. We literally have to be as strong as the melee and casters, at least when role bonus is accounted for. Tactician, Troubadour and Shield Samba are no better than Addle and Feint so we bring nothing of value to the party besides our dps, so it needs to be higher.

Being weaker is all well and good, until we're so weak that literally every other job can do our job better. We simply can't use Stormblood balancing for Shadowbringers because we don't have the same utilities anymore.

[HyoMinPark]

Well, do you remember when Yoshida said that they couldn't gli piercing res down to ranged dps because then they'd be "too op"? It all makes sense now...they probably never meant for ranged dps to be as strong as melee dps like they were in previous expansions.

I don’t think people are asking for the physical ranged to be as strong as a melee class in terms of personal damage. They’re just asking for them to not be as weak as they are. Right now, one could play one of the Big 3 (MNK, DRG, BLM) at an average level and still beat out playing a physical ranged at a high level.

[Karja]

Let me start my post by saying that it's pretty obvious that all ranged dps except for BLM currently need help.
I think everyone knows that at the heighest level BLM currently from all ranged jobs does by far the most damage.
My question(s) would be at which level should these jobs be balanced?

What I specifically mean with that is I checked E4S for the last week on FFlogs and looked at difference in DPS for the 10, 50, 95 and 100 percentile.
And DNC at 50% deals 9.36% less than a BLM at 50% but at 100% DNC deals a staggering 14.34% less.

I also looked at the DPS difference between 10% and 100% e.g.
BLM 11782 compared to 15815 (4033 difference or 34.23%)
DNC 11108 compared to 13547 (2439 difference or 21.96%)

or 50% and 95%
BLM 13194 compare to 14767 (1573 difference or 11.92%)
DNC 11959 compare to 12901 (942 difference or 7.88%)

It's a similiar case for the other jobs in the ranged role where no other jobs even reaches 25% difference in the 10-100 category or 10% difference in the 50-95 category.

It seems to be the case that while BLM on all levels deals more damage than the other ranged (even at 10%) it also scales better with player skill and/or gear.

If I manually adjust DNC dps at the 50 percentile to 13,194 which would be BLMs DPS at 50 percentile and add the same % increase DNC currently see going from 50-95% on FFlogs for this fight it would be at 14234 DPS for the 95% bracket and be 533 DPS (or 3.61%) behind BLM.
BTW I know that it would probably not play out like this entirely if SE buffs DNC or any other ranged dps.

If I do the same thing going for both jobs going from 50 percentile to 100 percentile
BLM 13194 -> 15815 (19.87% increase)
DNC 11959 -> 13547 (13.28% increase)
New DNC 13194 *1.1328 = 14946

DNC at 100% with parity on 50% on BLM would still be 869 dps (5.5%) behind BLM.

I don't try to justify BLMs DPS here I'm just genuinely interested what peoples thoughts are about this, how much influence on DPS should player skill and general job difficulty have.

[kajv95]

I don't try to justify BLMs DPS here I'm just genuinely interested what peoples thoughts are about this, how much influence on DPS should player skill and general job difficulty have.

General job difficulty can be split into two aspects - a skill floor and a skill ceiling. The skill floor should not have any bearing on the end balance of the job if the goal is for them to be theoretically balanced in such a way that job difficulty is included, since just because something is easy to start out with, does not mean it can't be equally difficult at the end level.

When it comes to the skill ceiling, if the balance of a job is skewed due to a higher intentional complexity in order to justify higher dps, then there should be an endgame imbalance. However, this would mean that the job is also not liable to receive QoL updates to decrease difficulty, something Level 80 Black Mages may note is exactly what Xenoglossy is. This difficulty must also be something that can be objectively perceived, not just something on a subjective level, since players may excel at different things, and to punish a player for being who they are (as a person) is something that shouldn't happen.

With player skill, well, this is where the skill floor shines. A job with a more lenient skill floor will have a shorter gap to cross by default. The end goal should still be noticable as a difference. The jobs can also be centered more around bringing something else to the table, allowing the jobs to effectively be weaker in damage but strong in their own right, which is what I believe FFXIV's current balancing tries to achieve, but fails because the tools are overtaxed.

The goal of this design is to make every job unique for their own tools, but strong enough to compete in their own right. Bringing an edge of extra damage can be considered the top jobs' edge, but just as a Machinist's tactician is on a 3 minute cooldown, so too must the edge of damage be minor enough that you can clearly say "RDM is slightly weaker, because it has the tool of a raise, but BLM brings damage which could prove useful to get through a difficult dps phase check".

I'd say that 543 DPS difference you picked out is actually a reasonable ballpark to hit for the dps difference between something that has the niche of just bringing more damage as opposed to having one or two tools at their disposal. It also simply plays well with how other jobs can reach their full rDPS potential by buffing said higher damage options, since a party composition with a BLM will be able to pad said BLM further increasing the party's overall numbers as opposed to the previously mentioned RDM.

As for what these options should be like, in the case of Phys. Range DPS, this is already more or less entirely in place save some problems with them being incredibly weak. With DNC being focused around 1 Party Member more than BRDs (previously) party-wide effects, where DNC gains such tools as Devilment on the Dance Partner while BRD has Battle Voice, and Curing Waltz being an instant option of HP as opposed to a timed heal up effect which relies on someone else to take use of it. This is how the classes can be varied while still being in the same role, and not eating each other alive. As for taxing movement on these, just... no. If they do that, then they have to stop designing fights around some jobs having movement options. Mostly every job with high movement capabilities already have supportive skills with limited range, and that is where movement tax is already apparent. Else I'm going to have to start advocating a gap closer on ranged...

and perhaps this would also make it fun to think about which sets of jobs work together best, though it'd be scary if something of the sort gets overtuned and makes the whole thing break down again, which is why aside from fixing the problems with support feeling stupidly weak on classes whose lore screams support, I'll advocate bandaid balancing via pdps first before they try and make everything work in a nicer way.

tl;dr, the way the game is currently being balanced is not properly in accordance with how the game is presented by the developers, where jobs should all be close to each other in terms of end result in order to prevent meta-based exclusion. In this current design ideology, no job should be so much weaker that it can be argued that bringing something else and foregoing a role bonus is a better dps option. varying skill floors will always exist, and skill ceilings will too, but only if the design of the game itself changed, should this be taken into account. Player skill should always be rewarded, but that is a given when designing jobs' endgame to be closer to each other.

[ForteNightshade]

I really hope we get some information in the next live letter on the 15th because the last mention of ranged balance was from late Stormblood when SE finally buffed MCH and said that we should be ready for nerfs in Shadowbringers again. But it seems like they forgot in their haste to remove Disembowel and Refresh that they can't use the same balancing anymore. There's no utility that would guarantee our spot and no Disembowel synergy to save us. While they probably have their hands full with the NIN and SMN mess, ranged classes really deserve a band-aid potency patch like NIN and SAM.

At least a confirmation that they're aware of the imbalances would be nice. It's awful to be in the dark and not know if the feedback is reaching the devs.

5.1 will be rather telling. Despite many of our vocal complaints, I will give credit where credit is due. The dev team has responded much better to potential issues than they did in Stormblood. Ninja was borderline worthless because of how tight the competition for melee spots are, and Monk wasn't much better. Granted, they went a little overboard with regards to the latter but at least it's something. If they at least acknowledge the issue, that's a step. If we see the Dark Knight treatment where they'd dead silent, I actually hope Ultimate groups run double Black Mage if only shine a giant massive beckon on how bad things have gotten.

[Akiudo]

-snip-

i would say balance around the 90-95% range, balancing for a potential max is futile as at this point there come things like a bard that suddenly has a procc rate of 65% on his dots, blackmages that didn't move an inch from the pull whereas the group worked around them in a way you wouldn't try to please the lord himself if he came down to earth and groups literally waiting for an extra 5 seconds so classes can get in their big 1500+ potency finisher that just went ready. Balancing for the low end on the other hand may not have this inherit problem, however and that i feel is important, people can allways better themselves, i don't mean this in a "just try harder" way, but if classes are close enough at the lower brackets people can overcome this through simply being better (or more experienced) at certain classes, take mch and bard, they are so close (all the time btw) you literally cant go up a single bracket on fflogs (so 20->25->30->40->50.......) without the bard in the higher bracket beating out the mch in the lower one. Also ideally you take more than one fight, because obviously some fights favor certain classes more than others.